What Is Participatory Research? A
Theoretical and Methodological
Perspective

PETER PARK

Society evolves as a continual process of transformation in which people
collectively inquire, evaluate, and take action to change their life circumstances. In postindustrial society, however, we are now witnessing a serious
threat to this human right of mastery over our own fate. This threat is not
new, but it is more systemic and more widespread than before the advent
of the industrialized nation-state. Significant segments of society all over
the globe are institutionally excluded from participating in the creation of
their own world as thinking, feeling, and acting subjects.

Participatory research is emerging as a self-conscious way of empowering
people to take effective action toward improving conditions in their lives.
It is not new for people to raise questions about their conditions or to
actively search for better ways of doing things for their own well-being and
that of their community, but what we are proposing is to look at these
actions as research that can be carried out as intellectual activity. Organized
rational efforts with an explicitly liberatory goal are needed in order to
counteract the disenfranchising features of modern society that are embedded in sociocultural structures.

But why call it research? Cast in the mold of research, the knowledge
link between what is needed for a better life and what has to be done to
attain it is made clearer; knowledge becomes a crucial element in enabling
people once more to have a say in how they would like to see their world
put together and run. Participatory research is a means of putting research
capabilities in the hands of the deprived and disenfranchised people so that
they can transform their lives for themselves.

I would like to present an overview of what participatory research aims
to accomplish. In doing so, I will describe how a participatory research

Print this page

While we understand printed pages are helpful to our users, this limitation is necessary
to help protect our publishers' copyrighted material and prevent its unlawful distribution.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.